* Age of your EC-child
8 1/2 months
* We started at...
Birth
* Generally speaking we are doing...
Very well, though we are not doing 99-100% perfectly like we used to, since
Bean is spending a lot of time on the floor. He doesn't often care if he
pees on the floor (though he still does frequently tell us he wants to go
potty even so).... He also went through a period of wanting to pee on
Daddy, but is tapering off now.
We do catch all poops (with one notable exception-- see below).
* How do you know your baby has to go? Baby's signals? Timing? Intuition? Is there a difference for poos and pees?
All of the above. Absolute difference between poos & pees-- poos used to be
entirely timing, as he pooped first thing in the morning. Lately, he is not
pooping as regularly, so we go more by signals, intuition, & physical signs.
* Which positions/receptacles do you use?
BB potty between my legs, sink while being held under the thighs, toilet
while being held under thighs or sitting on kid seat (Flip n'Flush), ground outside. Bean is of two minds about the potty lately-- he often does half a pee, then twists around and wants to get off. I think the potty is too cold, so we are working on remedying that. Plus, he is just too darned busy to sit
still for thirty seconds!!
* Do you use diapers or training pants? On what occasions, what kind of diapers?
Usually just use regular pants (or crotchless), but put a contour dipe under
him in the carseat. I sometimes put a contour dipe inside his pants if he
will be riding on my back, as we occasionally miss then (well, twice in
months, but...). When he is wearing his crotchless pants & contour dipe, I
can simply pull the end of the dipe down, pee him, then tuck it back in.
Sometimes we use very thin training pants, and on rare occasions, esp. if
*Matt* will be slinging him for awhile away from home, he will wear a dipe
(usually cloth contour with wool Biobottoms cover-- sometimes a fitted dipe
and pull on wool cover).
* How are you doing away from home?
Except for car rides (we often can't stop when he signals, as the roads
around here are tiny, twisty, two lane roads), we catch 100% when away from home if he is in the sling with me. He will sometimes pee in a diaper with no signaling at all if he is wearing one (ie. when Matt puts one on him), so I solve that by not putting a dipe on him! If he will be sitting on someone
else's carpeting, or in a high chair, I often tuck a contour dipe inside his
pants, as insurance against his forgetting to tell me... When he isn't in
the sling, we still catch at least 90%.
He is very happy to pee next to the car when we get out, and then again
before we get back in. He prefers that to using our car potty.
* What are you doing at night?
Usually have him nakey on top of a wool puddle pad with a receiving blanket
on top of it or sometimes on top of our wool fleece blanket. If I am really tired, I put a fitted dipe on him. And if I am EXHAUSTED, I put a fitted dipe and Aristocrats wool pull on cover on. When he wiggles or fusses, I sit up & put him on the BB potty which we keep on a shelf next to the bed. Sometimes he cries and I soothe him, telling him how much better he will feel when he pees-- he then pees (sometimes crying while he pees very forcefully), and we lie down and nurse back to sleep. I wait until morning to dump the potty.
There are nights I catch every pee, and others in which I catch none, but
usually I miss 1 or 2. If he pees on the blanket, it isn't a big deal to
put a new one down. Recently he does (hey TRISH, here's your answer) pee
upwards onto our comforter sometimes-- not sure what has changed, but this
didn't used to happen. Still figuring out how to handle it... I don't wear
anything to bed, so if I do get hit with pee, I just wipe it off. If part
of the comforter gets wet, I turn it over to dry. This may gross some
people out, but I don't wash it unless it smells, and so far, Bean's pee
doesn't make it smell. It is a wool comforter, and I assume that the same
thing that is true about wool covers not smelling from pee is true about our
comforter....
* Who takes baby to the potty?
Mama, papa, brother Max, sometimes William or Dora will help, my friend
Holly has a few times...
* Accidents - how many do you have and what times are especially accident-prone?
Ah, it varies. There are days we miss maybe one or two pees (er, usually
Papa missing), and others where we miss every other one. I don't really
keep track, as I take him when he asks or I feel he needs to go-- and if he
wants to, he pees. If not, it is his choice to get wet or pee on the floor.
There have been times I have been insistent that he pee when I *KNEW* he
needed to, and it was not a good thing. When we are tired and distracted,
obviously we have more misses, but we just dry up and continue on.....
* Other new insights
Umm... It's midnight and you want insights? Sheesh....
* What do you like most about ecing at the moment?
Knowing that Bean is connected with his body (oh, nothing cuter than him
looking down and laughing, grabbing his penis and saying, "Pssss" while he
is peeing!) and isn't living with a toilet strapped to him. Not to mention
that I NEVER, EVER have to change or wash a poopy diaper! (With the
exception of that FREAK accident, when I was trying to convince a man at a
LLL conference that EC works, and Bean POOPED in the sling!!! Well, he
started too, and waited until we got to the toilet to finish. Gargh. His belly was upset, and his poop was very green & watery, so it must have been hard to hold in & took him unaware.)
* Do you ever wish you'd have never heard about it?
There have been a few nights that I grumbled and vowed to put disposables on him at night and not potty him at all, but that was when I was exhausted and grouchy, and he was being recalcitrant about using the potty AND peeing
every hour. I would never actually do it... (Not to mention the disp. dipes
wouldn't really help-- I found a cache of them in a closet, and tried a few
at night. They leaked like crazy!! Almost as if the pee just sprayed
straight out of them...)
Beatrice-- married to Matt, mama to Max (7 yo, cloth diped until 2 1/2), William (5 yo, cloth diped until 2 1/2), Dora (3 yo, cloth diped/partly EC'd, grad at 22 months), and Albion (8 months old, EC'd from birth, mostly diaperless). Kids all nurse, unschooled, no vax, intact, UC, EC, yadda yadda...
http://www.breastandbelly.com
)
T
